Bits and Pieces

[ChrisGibson]

He’s not mad at him. Even then he was never mad at him. Most of that year they were so easy with each other, arms around each other while they smacked their gum, showing up almost hand and hand to the school cafeteria. All athletes were like that, and only athletes had an excuse to be like that. And if someone called them faggots, well then, look, they were. Right?
When they went down to run in Indianapolis, Paul and Wyman fell in with other runners from schools around the state. Kyle Norman was from Rummelsville not far off, and he and his best friend, Kurt would be rooming with them.
“Rummelsville is even smaller than East Carmel,” Kyle said. “I can’t wait to get out of there. Go someplace real. Where peopelare… I dunno, open minded.”
“Yeah,” Paul agreed.
He thought Kyle was one of the most beautiful guys he’d ever seen, tall strong like wire, bronze skinned with thick copper hair and dark green eyes. All four of them sat long into the night and Kurt said, “I know he’s gonna get out of Rummelsville.”
“You will too,” Kyle said, smiling. “We’ll get out together. I promise you. We’re not gonna let this Indiana bullshit get us down. If I can’t drive I’ll run! But I’m gonna get out of here.”
“And be big,” Wyman added.
Kyle said, “I don’t have to be big, but I gotta get out. I gotta live.”
Paul thought Kyle was the most alive person he’d ever seen. He didn’t doubt he’d have everything he wanted.

Late that night, while Paul and Wyman were trying to be quiet, they heard sighs, thumping, giggles across the room from the bed where Kyle and Kurt were.
“What they…?” Wyman began.
As a sigh came from the other bed, suddenly Wyman went down on Paul, causing him to cry out.
“Wyman!” Paul hissed, but Kyle pleasured him until Paul cried out and then, suddenly, in the other bed, Kyle and Kurt did the same, now all four of them, laughing, and they unabashedly set to, a rush going through Paul as Wyman humped him and the backboard continued to hit the bed, and the bed across from them creaked quicker and quicker. Wyman, or Kurt, came with a relieved shout and a minute later, Paul did too, staggering, crying out, thinking, Oh my God! When they had all come, there was silence in the room, and then suddenly—Paul thought it must have come from Kyle—chuckling. And then they were all laughing, all exhausted, all found out, all glad to be found out.

Being with Wyman was like being on top of the world.
So it hit Paul harder a punch in the face when Wyman said he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and they were getting married.
“You an me shouldn’t have even been doing it,” Wyman told Paul. “It was a sin.”
“It’s actually a sin to have premarital sex with anyone,” Paul said, even though he remembered his girlfriend pulling in down onto her that night a year ago to make sure he was straight.
Paul leaned in and hissed, “I gave you love. All she gave you was… a fucking baby.”
There was no point in rehearsing it. Wyman ended things with him. He was rough about it and Paul went cold. He was so cold when Mariah said, “You don’t even like me. You won’t touch me. You’re in love with Wyman, you fucking faggot,” he just slapped her savagely. She burst into tears, but he didn’t care. He shoved his ball cap on his head and turned his face from her to the window.
His Dad had been gone a few weeks and Claire said, sagely, “I don’t think he’s coming back.”
“He is!” Matty protested.
Claire, just turned eight, looked at her little brother and said, “I hope not.”
It seemed to all happen at once. Wyman was married and his girlfriend just got bigger and bigger like the moon. Paul stopped acting and dedicated everything to sports, and those soft feelings were gone. If he let himself go soft again, he didn’t know what would happen.

This was the year when Kyle Norman went missing. When his picture showed up on the news, Paul remembered his friend, the person who was like him who lived in Rummelsvile. Kyle had seemed so happy, so untouchable, so beautiful. Now Paul, looking at the picture of the copper haired track stair learned his mother had abandoned him and his siblings with his stepfather who hadn’t even reported him missing. Had Kyle turned to track to outrun his bullshit the way Paul had? Had he taken Kurt with him, or had they fallen apart too?
“He had the sense to leave,” Paul said. “I ought to leave too. He knew this place would kill him.”
He thought of Kyle on his way to California, having the sense to get out of Rummelsville before the place ate him up. Or maybe he’d only gone to South Bend. Whatever helped.
I hope you’re okay, man. In that room they had both revealed themselves to each other, having sex with their boyfriends in the dark, almost as intimate as making love to each other. Kyle had heard him come. Later, after they had laughed in the dark, they’d gotten up together, naked, to wash the come of their bodies. Paul felt so tender for that moment of seeing another boy like himself, sharing that bathroom, neither of them having to explain what had happened. The glance they had shared. Paul ached to talk to him again. Maybe soon, maybe wherever the track star popped up. Maybe Paul would get there too. At any rate, he had to get out of here.

Paul’s mother said nothing when his grades dropped, though years later she reflected that she ought to have said a little. Her life was in shock at the time as well. He was in the car one day with Claire and Matty, taking them to the shoe store? That sounds about right. When he saw two cars side by side like something from ma drag race movie and he heard someone shouting, “Faggot!”
It had been so long since the bitterness, he did not fear for himself, but he paid attention to who was being yelled at.
“Put your heads down,” Paul said to his siblings, his adrenaline rising. The car in front of him zoomed faster and the one beside it went immediately behind as the red light commanded Paul to stop.
“Are we gonna help those people?” Claire demanded.
“You’re going to stay in the car,” Paul said. “Both of you.”
He got impatient with the light, looked for cops, and then crossed Buren Avenue, gunning his engine to catch up with the cars. He drove up and down blocks for about five minutes before he found the cars, parked his and crossed the street to the house with the open door. He stopped for a moment, looking around the front yard, and then finding a metal pipe, took it and went into the house. He heard the kicking and stomping before he saw it.
“You’re a fucking faggot. Admit it. You goddamn faggot.”
“I got a kid!” the man wailed as they beat him. “I’m married!” he cried.
Just like that, Paul slammed the pipe on the first man’s head and the other stopped in mid-kick terrified.
“Get the fuck out!” Paul bellowed, beating him. He was possessed by a demon. With his pipe he was beating the two of them, chasing them out of the house, and it wasn’t until they were well gone, Paul turned to the man whose jaw was a bloody mess and whose blood was in a pool all around his floor.
“Wyman!”

There was no time to ask anything or be afraid. He called 911 and an ambulance was there not nearly quick enough to take him to County Hospital. Paul followed behind with Claire and Matty, and from the hospital he called his mother, commenting, “The hospital closes at nine! Whoever heard of a hospital that closes? I hate Jasper County. This place is barbaric.”
Merilee came to the hospital to take the kids, but Paul stayed in the dim waiting room, and the whole world was dim. He watched the news and they reported that what police believed to be the body of seventeen year old Kyle Norman had been found headless, in a reservoir outside of Rummelsville, and his stepfather had been brought in for questioning.
It was late that night that Wyman’s wife came in.
“You’re him,” She said.
“Huh?”
“You saved him,” She said. Paul had never known Her name.
“It was my brother who did it,” She reported. “The doctor told me over the phone Wyman’s probably gonna have a steel jaw.
“Were you fucking him?”
“What?”
She looked at Paul, eyes narrowed. He thought, what a fucking hillbilly! Then he thought, we’re all fucking hillbillies. I’ve gotta get Claire away from this place.
“You weren’t,” she said. “I didn’t think anyone was. I was just so mad. He’s awake now. Do you want to go see him?”
Paul nodded. He rose slowly.
Wyman’s face was so swollen and his eyelids were fat pillows. He was covered in stitches and nothing like the beautiful boy he’d shared his life with a year before. He was married with a fat, nasty wife and in laws who were probably in the Klan, and he’d just get her pregnant again next year. He was a hillbilly.
“Paul,” Wyman croaked. “Paul.”
He burst into tears and Paul sat there, awkwardly, as Mrs. Wyman walked into the hospital room, Paul patted Wyman’s shoulder and sat down beside his bed.
All the next day he was desolate. He sat in his room until he realized he was thinking about death too much, and then he went running until he was out of town and his legs ached and his butt cramped and his arms were on fire. His lungs burned and it took him till evening to get home. That night, on the news, they reported that, having followed Kyle Norman’s stepfather’s lead, the police had gone to a ditch and found Kyle Norman’s head, obscenities carved into it by a pen knife. The next morning, when Paul opened the Chicago Tribune which had no problem with niceties and plainly stated that Kyle was gay. His stepfather had possibly molested and then killed him and, before sawing the boy’s head from his body, he had carved into his forehead in sharp capitals, the word: FAGGOT.
Just like that, Paul got up. He packed two bags and got the little money he had. He couldn’t wait till his mother got out of work, or the kids got out of a daycare. There would never be a better time. He had to get the fuck out of this place.
He went to the truck stop and caught the Greyhound that would take him to Gary. From Gary he would go to Chicago and from Chicago he would go as far west as he could.

He wouldn’t return for five years.


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Wow Paul has been through so much. Poor guy and his poor friends they had more then a rough time of it too. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yeah, Paul has been through a lot, and this is really kind of only the start. Incidentally, the Kyle story is true.

 

[ChrisGibson]

PAUL BEGINS HIS LIFE IN CALIFORNIA



Every time Paul heard about a runaway, his heart sank. He remembered his own running away. He remembered getting on that bus and going to the place he had wished Kyle Norman could have gone, rushing out of the county as if to outrun Kyle’s fate and Wyman’s fate, one’s head chopped off, the other’s head bashed in. He could still see Kyle in track competitions, hair bronze in the sunlight, his long legs and strong thighs golden. The triumphant smile on his face. Even though Paul lost to him, he didn’t feel like a loser. Kyle’s arm flung over him, congratulating him, and in the end, the certainty he and Wyman felt that they shared something with Kyle, and with his boyfriend. Well, then how could someone so beautiful and so free, be trapped by that horrible man, and that worthless mother, and how could his life end the way it had?
As the bus rolled out of the dirty bus station in Chicago, his mind pushed toward the image of Kyle, corpse thrown away, his head rotting in trash behind the house. But this image was hidden in darkness, and his mind refused to see it. Paul fell asleep, dreaming about Kyle, and Kyle turned iinto Wyman and then it was the next day and he had to pee. He moved, painfully, to the bathroom in the back of the bus.

That afternoon they came to the first transfer in Saint Louis, and the bus Paul was on was late, and so he had to remain in the depot for three terrified hours. He couldn’t allow himself to think about what he had done, and if he had not spent all of his money, he would have gone back to Indiana. The next transfer was in Las Vegas, and when he stepped outside there was a burning dry heat he had never known, and so he went back in, thinking the place looked blown and dried out, in some ways like Indiana. Though the mountains were spectacular. Those mountains, black and streaked in white ,were about all this shit, touched only by clouds and maybe by God. There was no long delay here, and he got on the third bus which brought him to LA. At the bus station, like an idiot, he had asked for a ticket to California, and the ticket manager, with the patience reserved for a retarded child, explained he actually needed a city to go to.
“Hollywood!” Paul shouted, and patiently, the ticket manager had said, “L.A.”



Nothing happened for him when he came out of the bus depot into the night. He was definitely in a city and yet it had a different air from Chicago. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt. If he thought too much about it, he might go a little crazy. He was nowhere near home and nowhere near family.
And yet, he felt safe. Staying in East Carmel, remaining in Indiana and being what he was, was definitely not safe. He walked up and down the streets and saw a lot of people like himself, and soon he was hungry. He’d have to find a job. He passed a diner, and saw a girl taking an old couple’s order. Maybe come there in the morning? Waiters got paid on tips and tips were shitty. But it was a living, right? And he had never thought about a place to live. A place to live would be the first thing to find with the little bit of money on his person. He hadn’t thought this through at all.
That night he stayed at a cheap motel where he could hear fucking through the wall, and checkout time was at eleven in the morning. He had Cheezits and a candy bar for dinner, and took his first shower in days. He wished he’d had shower shoes, and he didn’t dare look down or look at all into the filthy stall.
He sat in the chair, looking at the bed, suspiciously, and went to sleep.
Pounding the pavement was a horrible expression. He did it now, and found himself unemployed at the end of the day after going from restaurant to shop to restaurant to shop. And he really just wanted enough to stay in a motel that night. That was three times more than a decent hotel in Indiana and yet, waiters got paid the same everywhere. It was in that despair he thought, “At least the weather’s nice here,” and laughed, then went to the beach. He had never had a wry sense of humor before, and was surprised by its sudden appearance. He slept under a bridge and thought, “I always wondered what it would be like to sleep under a bridge. I didn’t really think people did it. And yet, here I am.”
He stayed around the next day, learning the rules quickly. To not look homeless during the day, to find your place at night. He needed to shave now. He needed so much, and he didn’t know how much longer he’d keep it up.
“Guys would pay for you,” said Russell, a red head who had stayed near him the night before.
“Huh?”
“Guys. Businessmen. Man, you go up the strip and they will pay good money for blowjobs.”
“I don’t think I’d like to do that,” Paul said more slowly than he wanted to.
“Or they blow you.” Russell shrugged. “You just lay back and give it.”
“You do that?” Paul asked. “You’re gay?”
“For fifty dollars, yeah. See that kid over there? Little Mike. He works at the vendor, but he got paid five hundred dollars just to let some old guy fuck him.”
“I don’t think I could do that,” Paul said.
“Well maybe not that,” Russell agreed. “But whatever you could do. Do. It’s better than sleeping on sand.”
Paul nodded, then he said. “Do you go out there? On the streets.”
“Yeah!”
“Could I go with you?” Paul asked. “See how it’s done.”
“Sure thing. Brother. It’s enough horny fuckers out there for all of us.”

Clean yourself up, obviously. Don’t worry about looking a little homeless. They like that shit. Stand here. Not on the corner. That’s too obvious. But like, yeah, against that wall. Just leaning, like you got nothing better to do. Chew on some gum, and when the car comes up to you just ask if you can help him? Real like you don’t even care, like is he lost or something. If you want to live, don’t get in the car with him. Unless you can take him. But you don’t know what he’s got on him. Half of these motherfuckers are so thirsty they’ll suck you in an alley. Make sure you get your money first. And don’t just take anything else they offer. If you haven’t seen the money, don’t be afraid to move on.

In the alley, Paul was surprised when the old man in the grey suit made him come. He was still shivering and halfway out of his body while the man licked his penis and sucked on it greedily.
“I wish you would fuck me,” the man whined a little, and Paul, not knowing what else to say, slipped his penis back into his pants.
“Uh…” Paul told him, “have a good night.”
He walked away from the man, a grimace on his face. If you played Scrabble once, you weren’t a Scrabbler. If you went to the movies once you wouldn’t call yourself a movie goer. More importantly, if you ran once, you weren’t a runner. He knew that. So how come right now he felt like he was a whore? He wasn’t just someone who had let a man suck his dick for cash once. This had changed him. It was so odd, he would say years later to the few friends who knew him intimately, much bigger things happened to him, but this thing that took a few moments remained with him. It stung and he hated to remember it, that very first time, the mingled pleasure of being blown for the first time in a long time combined with the shame of who was doing it, where and why. He reached into his pocket, opened his hand and looked at what he had, stuffing it back quickly, suddenly street cagey and not quite the farm boy from Indiana. That was seventy-five dollars. Enough for a couple of nights in a poor motel. More than a waiter would make on his feet all day. This was simple economics. And he was already a whore.
He figured it took him about a half hour to be ready for sex again, and if he could do this two more times he would be able to go to the bank in the morning, open up an account so he wasn’t walking around with cash, and start some type of life for himself. There was so much he wanted to do with his life, and he would do it. But he couldn’t do it homeless, and so he cleared his throat, tried to make himself laugh and went out onto the street to make his living.


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Paul had a rough start to his time in California. Even if he doesn’t like having sex for money it is keeping him from being homeless. I know how things end up for him but it is good to read about more of his past. Excellent writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, its the Paul story that there was never time to put in the books, and that explains at lot about him, especially when we first meet him as Johnny Mellow in book one, and it's good to finally tell this tale.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER SIX

Paranoid about carrying cash, and of course most paranoid about losing what he had worked so hard for, Paul went to the first bank he could find the next morning. He had made two hundred dollars in a night, and he wondered, as he signed the details on his new account, if he could make that every night, or if this was just a fluke. Having received so much money so quickly for so little time, but at an emotional price that he was already feeling, Paul was determined to make this work.
He talked to Russell, and he got up the courage to talk to the other boys on the street, to look through newspapers to find out where he could get more business. But this was after he’d gotten a decent breakfast and after he’d found a room for the night. He couldn’t keep living in hotels. He had to find a real apartment, something that didn’t take up half of his income in a single night. TJ, one of the boys on the street, told him he had a place with two other guys, but Paul had a plan and it involved his own space. He didn’t for a single night, want to sleep in the same apartment with people he wasn’t entirely sure about and who just might steal whatever he had on him. He would spend the money at the motel.
The motel was a place to sleep in the day, and from what Paul had been told, a great place for business at night. All he had to do was sit near his door, knees apart, looking like a disaffected teen and puffing on the cigarette he was learning to smoke for show. And then a middle aged man would role up. He would look at him, the man would look back. Paul would stand up and go to his door. He would feel him down in the guise of a passionate hug, rejoicing that he still had muscles, and then he would say his price. These were days when Paul surprised himself. He didn’t feel like he was in darkness. He had been in darkness for a long time. Back home in East Carmel things had gone dark. He felt like he was rootless and none of this was real and the money was so damn easy. No… it took a short time to earn it. That was more the truth. By the time he’d found an apartment, living over an old, semi deaf woman, he had the money to pay two months rent up front. He’d also developed a taste for the cigarettes he was smoking. He had learned that several men wanted nothing more than to spend a whole night with a beautiful boy in wrap around shades who looked farm fresh from the Midwest, but with just a touch of cynicism. They liked the way he gave that cagey smile from the side of his mouth while chewing gum.
“When I really make enough,” Paul was saying to his friend TJ, one night, “I can finally go to school like my mom wanted me too. I’m thinking about the acting program.”
“You can do a bit of acting now,” TJ told him. “There are studios all over town. I work at them sometimes.”
Paul, not completely stupid, was beginning to understand TJ meant porn. Paul simply dismissed this and said, “There’s this one rich married guy coming tonight, and all he wants to do is rub my back and tell me about how his wife doesn’t understand him. And that’s some good money.”

And this is true. They did want to talk to him, and they did want to rub his feet. But they always wanted to fuck him. Sometimes without a condom. He never thought that would happen. It was all blowjobs to begin with. He let them blow him. But then he blew them back when they asked for it. Sometimes they were clean. A lot of times they weren’t. And then it went to fucking, and then it went to right now, with his face pressed into the pillow while this married man fell on him again and again, making his asshole ache, pulling on his hair, grunting, “Take that, you fucking faggot, take that, take it…” until he lost control, groaned, and came.


TOMORROW: ELEGY

 

[CharmedFan28]

Paul’s early life continues to be very interesting. That was a great conclusion to the chapter! I look forward to learning more of Paul’s past. Excellent writing!

 

[ChrisGibson]

PAUL CONTINUES TO TELL FENN HIS STORY. HAVING SURVIVED LIFE ON THE STREETS AND SEXUAL ASSAULT, PAUL REMAKES HIMSELF.


S E V E N



I did it by not thinking.
-Paul Anderson



And it wasn’t even the money. Well, it was partially the money. But it was the feeling that when they begged him, and when he refused he wasn’t being nice… he wasn’t being… Christian.

“You’re a Christian, right?” she said.
“Yeah,” he said, sounding more doubtful than he should have felt.
“Then you can’t be gay…”
“Good boy… Good boy…”
The humiliation as his body had jerked, as he had come inside of her.

This idea of being a Christian and therefore being obliging and being proper, not making it difficult for people, had brought him to some bad places. A pregnancy scare for one. This was a story that almost no one knew. Not even Kirk. Only Fenn, who had been the first friend to accept him as he was, and be completely interested in him, to listen to him without judgment, but also without titillation. The night he lay face down, almost suffocating in a pillow while he was hardfucked, part of Paul knew that this man, who had seemed so nice, who had given him his first taste of cocaine, was just repeating what he had heard and getting his aggression out.
But as the fucking went on, the other part knew he was indeed a faggot and a prostitute, being raped on a bed two thousand miles from home and when the man left—after having paid fifteen hundred dollars—Paul got up long enough to lock the door behind him, and then collapsed on the bed again, looking at nothing.


“You want to know how I did it,” Paul said.
“I just wondered how I couldn’t know that you did it,” Fenn said.
“I never told you, that’s how.”
“But I feel like I should have known,” Fenn said, “like if I had had half of an imagination, then I would have known.”
“It isn’t your job to imagine the most horrible aspects of your friends’ lives.”
“It is my job to have mercy with my friends though. And howdo you have it if you can’t have the sense to realize what they’ve been through?”
“Anything that ever happened to me I put myself through,” Paul said. “The only flaw you ever had, Fenn, is that you take to much on yourself. Even right now you’re imagining yourself right there, wishing you could do something for a boy who hadn’t existed for over twenty-five years.”
Fenn said nothing immediately.
At last he said, “Well, yes then, I do want to know how you did it.”
“I did it by not thinking.”


Rape, pain, disrespect, they were collateral damage. Sometimes the guy you blew, punched you in the face and your head hit the bathroom wall. Sometimes the guy fucking you tried to strangle you. Before the year was out, Russell and TJ had gotten into the cars of strange men and never returned again. Two boys were found in a ditch near the canyons, but the police could not identify them. Later, a mutual friend confirmed that TJ and Russell had been sodomized, strangled and, in TJ’s case, mutilated. And TJ was just sixteen. They had been disappeared, less important even than the girls who were so easily thrown away. You had to be careful, a gay kid meant nothing, a trick meant less. Paul stepped up his wardrobe and began going to the more expensive clubs where wealthy gay men found boys for the night. One evening a toothy black haired one bought him a drink and after buying him two drinks he said, “Can I talk to you?”
“You’re talking?” Paul said.
“Nice, kid.” The man replied. “But are you listening?”
Paul swiveled in his seat. “I am not.”
“What’s your name?”
“Johnny,” Paul said.
“Johnny,” the man assessed, looking like he doubted, but also looking like he didn’t care, “I’m Guy.”

Johnny didn’t know if Guy was trying to date him or trying to buy him. He wasn’t sure if the man knew what he was. He kept buying him drinks, and Paul looked to see if Guy was actually drinking the ones he was getting for himself. He was.
Guy said, “Take off those shades. It’s night.”
Johnny did and Guy said, “Goddamn, sexy eyes! Don’t hide that shit.”
Paul shrugged and grinned, turning red, and Guy said, “There’s the guy under the hardass!”
“Yeah, well,” Paul said, “You have to be a hardass around here. Not being a hardass will get you killed.”
“Being too hard will get you killed too,” Guy said. “So, are we going to your place or mine?”
Paul tried to laugh and said, “Who said we were going any place?”
“You,” Guy said. “The moment you walked in here.”
“Well,” Paul shrugged. “I know what my place looks like. Let’s see your place.”
“Excellent choice,” Guy said, raising a finger to call the waiter so he could pay him.

They jumped in Guy’s convertible and for the first time LA looked like LA was supposed to. For the first time Paul felt like he was living that LA life, the wind blowing through his hair. He wanted to stay with this man and get whatever he had to offer. Right now he offered a joint, and Paul inhaled and then passed it.
He didn’t understand the neighborhoods well enough to really know where he was, but Guy didn’t live in a mansion, and Paul had expected a mansion. He had a very nice apartment, the kind of apartment he wanted one day a complex with a nice lawn in the front and a walk up to what was Guy’s well appointed condo. They drank champagne and snorted blow on his large bed, and then Guy was undoing Paul’s pants, and Paul, high as shit, was letting him, was feeling Guy sucking his cock.
“Let’s get these off,” Guy said.
They undressed and Paul lay on the bed while Guy went down on him, thrilling him, shocking him, making him whimper.
“Turn over,” Guy guided him, and Paul cried out as Guy’s tongue darted into his ass. As he lay on the bed, Guy moved up and down his body, pulled his penis into his mouth and sucked him from behind while thrusting a finger into his anus. As he lay on the bed Guy mastered him, building up the pleasure in him and then making it slake until, at last, like Guy wanted, like they both wanted, Paul mounted him. As they both cried out, fucking in that room, and, at last Paul exploded inside of his, his body shaking, shaking, quivering again, Paul realized this was the first real sex he’d had since Wyman. Half drunk with it, he passed out on top of Guy, and contented, his mouth on the other man’s ear, he passed into slumber.


“And now for your payment,” Guy said, and Paul wasn’t entirely sure if it was morning or not.
“So there is payment,” Paul murmured. “I was wondering if I was your date or your hooker.”
Paul didn’t seem to mind, and Guy, sitting up in a silk bathrobe, said, “What if you weren’t either. What if you were a partner?”
“Wha?”
“You said you liked acting, right?”
“Yeah,” Paul shrugged, too lazy to get up.
“And you’ve worked the streets. You’ve made your money how you had to.”
At the look on Paul’s face, Guy said, “Who the fuck is blaming you? What I’m saying is how would you like to never have to fuck an ugly guy again? Or have to fuck one in your house? Or on a corner?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about porn,” Guy said. “I’m talking about Johnny Mellow and his cornfed adventures.”
“Who the fuck is Johnny Mellow?”
“You,” Guy said. “You just gave me the name Johnny. Let’s add Mellow to it, and now you’re a star.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“I’m not,” Guy said.
“I’ve never done porn before.”
“We fucking did porn last night. What we did was goddamn pornographic. I’ve never been fucked that way in my life.”
“But on film.”
“Are you afraid your mom’s gonna see it? Back in Indiana? At the local church? We’re doing some basement studio shit for homos in the greater LA area, and Johnny, they’re gonna fucking love you.”
Johnny sat up in bed, shaking his head.
“I gotta think about this one.”
“Think about making forty K in a year for twelve hours a week. Think about the fame even. You don’t know how much these fuckers look up to porn stars.”
Paul shook his head and grimaced with disbelief, “Who the fuck would look up to a porn star?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I would be.”
“Howabbout this,” Guy said, “You and me go shopping for Johnny Mellow. We’ll get him some clothes, and you can try him out and see if you like it?
“My name isn’t Johnny. Or John.”
“My name isn’t Guy,” Guy said. “It’s Sean Fisher. But whoever heard of anybody named Sean or Fisher making it big by starting a porn company? You’re not going to believe this, but its about to be a porn star’s world, and a porn star’s gonna be you, my friend. Whaddo you say?”
“I say,” Paul answered slowly,” that I like the idea of forty K.”
They went shopping and came back with checked Wrangler shirts that fit tight at the chest, snug blue jeans, lots of chewing gum. No boots, that’s overkill. Wrap around shades, ball caps, a cowboy hat. Back at Guy’s apartment they tried on clothes and laughed and Paul got in the mirror and emphasized his Midwestern drawl, chewing on a straw and saying, “Hey, mah name is Johnny Mellow, and I’m from Jasper, Indiana.” He didn’t want to be from East Carmel. That was where Paul came from. That was too close.
While they were fooling around in the bedroom with costumes, Guy slipped a hand in Paul’s pants, and then a moment later he was giving him head, and before the hour was out, Paul was fucking him doggy style on the bed. All the times he’d been working as a prostitute he had never felt in control or enjoyed the sex he was having. It couldn’t even be said that he enjoyed the money. It paid the bills. For the first time since he’d come to California, he was having fun and after he’d finished, coming on Guy’s back and passing out exhausted while Guy ran his hands over Paul’s strong stomach and marveled, Guy said, “I want you to come somewhere with me tonight. Bring your shades.”


In the movie house that Paul wanted to get the hell out of, but trusted Guy enough to show up to, one porno was wrapping up and Guy said, “Don’t look at the guy in the seat next to you, and don’t look in the bathrooms. Just look ahead.”
The next film showed two men coming into an apartment, and then they were making out, snorting blow, getting undressed. By the time Paul realized it was Guy’s apartment and it was in fact himself and Guy, he opened his mouth to protest, but Guy said, “Just watch.”
Paul watched himself being serviced and then he watched himself fucking Guy, and it wasn’t so much seeing himself as hearing the reaction. The camera faded out after he had come, and then the camera was traveling up and down his young, taught body, lingering on his face.
“He’s sweet looking. He’s like a baby.” Paul heard some folks saying, “Look at his fucking eyes. Look how he looks at that guy when he comes.”
And then, in the next film, there he was again, as Johnny Mellow, and Paul didn’t want to watch himself, but he heard the delight when people saw him again and as they were leaving the theatre, Guy said, “How well did we do tonight?”
The ticket man said, “They love that red headed kid. He’s a fucking star.”
Paul’s ball cap hid his hair, and shades hid his eyes. He smacked his gum furiously. “They’re gonna want more of him.”
“He’s going to be the foundation of my studio. They call him Johnny Mellow.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, that first one you ran made some money, but I’m telling you, Johnny Mellow—just in this house—made about three thousand dollars. You find him again and start making some real movies and… Goddamn!”
“You believe me now?” Guy said on the way home. “If you want those tapes back I’m telling you the truth, they were illegal and you can have ‘em and the money. But if you want to get off the streets and into the next big thing…”
“I’m gonna be a fucking star,” Paul said, tonelessly, chomping on his gum.
“Yeah, John, you’re gonna be a star.”
John was going to be a star. Paul Anderson had tons of reservations and had turned to sex work to pay his bills. Nothing was really happening for him. But it wasn’t Paul Anderson who had walked into that club and met Guy, and it wasn’t Paul Anderson who had fucked the hell out of Guy on screen and wowed that crowd. Paul Anderson would pay taxes to the government and put money in his bank account once a week, but from now on, as he sped down Rodeo Drive in wrap around shades and a ball cap that costs more than the wardrobe he had bought from Wal Mart in East Carmel, he decided it was time to be Johnny Mellow.


MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Paul has done and been through a lot in his past. I was sad to read about the rape. The beginnings of his porn career were fascinating to read. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Paul suffered many awful experiences, and if I'm not wrong, I think it may be implied that what was told was one of several occasional rapes. Most unfortunately, except for the dashin porn career, a lot of people have led Paul's life.

 

[ChrisGibson]

A MIDDLE AGED PAUL REMEMBERS WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE JOHNNY MELLOW AND RECEIVE THE MOST DEVASTATING NEWS OF HIS LIFE


The back door of the house swung open. and a tall, thin light skinned girl with curly dark hair down her back in a mismanaged ponytail entered with an almost white baby and demanded: “Have you seen your son?”
“No,” Paul said in a babyish voice, coming to scoop up the baby from his daughter in law’s arms, “But you should stay for dinner, and when you hear him, tell him to come over. How is it?” he said to the baA by, jouncing him up and down while the baby smiled and looked down at him in wonder, “How it is, little man!”
So this was his grandson, and his newest grandson. If Elias had children, they would be his grandchildren too, but this child right here was the biological grandchild of his own body, and that was an amazing thing. This gurgling red headed baby was an Anderson, and what was more, he was the biological grandson of Todd, his friend for three decades, the man who had rescued him from the pit of hell and brought him to this town when he had nearly died of a drug overdose at the end of his career.
“What the hell is this?” Maia demanded from the living room.
Paul came into the living room and watched his daughter in law flipping through channels.
“It’s just sluts! It’s just bitches with no clothes. And dudes too. And don’t even look at the internet. That’s just people taking their clothes off and fucking too. The whole world is porn now. It’s not just pornos. Its everything. Reality TV, that’s porn too. It’s just people thinking they aren’t real unless everything they do can be seen. It’s no limits. That’s all porn is.”
Paul is never sure how much Maia’s generation knows about his past, but he thinks of what Guy said all those years ago. Whenever Paul goes on any gay website, theire’s a young boy hosting it, sitting in his underwear, selling sex toys or interviewing a porn star. Or there are underwear models who look a lot like he looked when he was calling himself a model, but he was really a prostitute. He remembers looking through Elias or Dylan’s Facebook and seeing young gay men who are, yes, dressed like porn stars, and he thinks how Guy was totally right. They were getting in on the ground floor of things. Paul is sitting down on the couch beside his daughter in law, holding his fat grandbaby on his lap, and she is watching him look like a doddering old granddad, but he got in on the ground floor of this shit a long time ago, and it’s true. Now the whole world is pornographic.




Johnny wasn’t the first actor in Guy McClintock’s studio. He was the first to have a name and a persona and show up in movies frequently. Once Guy had Johnny, they began to film a series of movies around him, all about an innocent from a Midwest that, when Paul thought ot it years later, must have been more Kansas than Indiana. Alongside Johnny came Bick Throbbing, Stan Lightning, Rod Storm and a galaxy of others. In a few years they had gone from the back studio on Lawrence Street to Eagle Studios. Guy moved out of his apartment to the large house on Melrose, and Paul moved from his little apartment over Mrs. Conley to Guy’s old apartment.
Guy’s new large home became a flophouse for boys half homeless who wandered in with dreams of being actors or personal trainers, but stayed to make a masturbation flick which turned into their first porn. But other people showed up, men and women, who didn’t have much to do with the industry, or at least, didn’t plan to take their clothes off.
“I have my hands in all sorts of things,” Guy said. And of course he did. Johnny had snorted cocaine with him the first night they’d been together. And Johnny snorted cocaine a great deal of the time. There was a whole arsenal of drugs—some of them pharmaceutical, that made life a more interesting place. At a party in Guy’s house, Johnny discovered that ecstasy made you want to fuck and be fucked by everyone. When he let Derek Ryder fuck him against the wall in a crowded hallway, people half high passing by, it was the rush of of his life.
Johnny Mellow, kind and sweet on film and yes, kind and sweet in real life, was a hedonist on a scale that Paul Anderson could never have been. Johnny Mellow was who people wanted to see at gay conventions and parties centered on porn where there would be talent shows and the winner of the show would be a new recruit at Guy’s Studio. Johnny, TJ Hellstrom and Burt Maverick were the stars of Gay Pride parades, muscles oiled, shades flipped up, in nothing but their glittering Speedos.
A good porn star was a top and a bottom. Johnny liked flip and fucks, to be the fucker and then to be fucked, and that meant a day of work, meant no eating the night before. Water, cigarettes and coke was the died of the night before. An enema the morning of. Possibly two to get everything out. There were those unprofessional fucks who screwed everything up by not being clean. The day of filming, Johnny learned to take Viagra and maybe ecstasy, anything that guaranteed he’d be super hard and super horny. The best Johnny Mellow was so high he fucked like a jackrabbit, and so messed up he screamed like a bitch when he was fucked in his ass.
That Johnny Mellow had to work two days a week and the work was work. It was exhausting and he would drive home and sit in the dark sometimes.
But the sex that had become a living was its own drug. He had learned to like sex when he came into this business, and he was around people who were, frankly, sex addicts. He found himself cruising the streets looking for the same boys he had once been, and bringing them back to his apartment to blow or fuck for the afternoon. Sex was a feeling and sex was a business. He always tipped well.
One day he decided it was time to write home. Up until now he had always planned to write when he had that life his family could be proud of. But as time went by, it became more apparent that his life was never going to be something his family could understand. He wrote a brief letter to his mother saying he was in California, acting, and it was hard, and he was doing little films that she would probably never see.
When she returned him a four page letter, he was ashamed and didn’t read past, “Dear Paul…” He wrote every two weeks, waiting for return letters and telling his mother as little as possible. He had just filmed a movie called Pizza Slut when a letter came from home and, as he opened it, he saw that it did not bear his mother’s name, but his sisters: Claire Renee Anderson.
Inside, it simply said, “Please come home. Mom is dying.” She had left a phone number, and Paul… he was distinctly Paul right now—knew he had better call.

The only person who knew everything was Guy, and Paul was embarrassed at how emotional his director, his boss, his occasional lover, got about Paul’s mom. He also noted that Guy kept from saying anything stupid. He knew Guy’s mother had died of cancer, and he knew the director wanted to say something about it.
Paul dressed for his part. Johnny Mellow was an exaggerated Midwestern cowboy, but now he had to dress for Paul Anderson. He had to play the kid he had been. The person he now was could not show. He had to hide the cigarettes. At first he thought of not bringing them, but that wasn’t an option. He thought if he could land in O’Hare, rent a car and then score some coke in Chicago, he would be fine. Guy had friends, Paul knew where to go. He had to show up looking like he was clean, looking like he hadn’t done what he had done, like he wasn’t who he was.

MORE TOMORROW

 

[CharmedFan28]

Poor Paul! He was getting his life together then getting the sucker punch of learning his mother is dying? So sad. Great writing and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

It is one hell of a sucker punch. I'm glad we're back to this story. I was sorry to be away from it so long.

 

[ChrisGibson]

AS WE CONCLUDE CHAPTER SEVEN, PAUL DEALS WITH LIFE THE BEST WAY HE CAN

When he came to East Carmel it was two in the afternoon and he arrived in the house surprised the hideaway key was in the same hideaway place. He spent an hour looking himself up and down making sure he was the same old Paul, but he was surprised when, even though he looked the same in jeans and tee shirt and feed cap, still thankfully big nosed, big eared, freckled and awkward, it was the girl who entered the house who had changed.
“Claire? It’s not possible.”
“If you leave for five years,” the tall girl with hair down to her back said, “anything’s possible.”
“You’ve got to be… twelve.”
“Thirteen,” Claire said.
Paul just shook his head, looking lost.
“You’ve been gone half my life,” Claire said. “We thought you were dead. Ma was so surprised when she finally heard from you. I don’t know if Matty even remembers you.”
“I remember him,” they both heard a sullen voice as the back door slammed shut.
A kid taller than Claire, but more awkward, entered the room/ His red hair was dark and down to his shoulders.
“I remember that Dad left, and then Paul left.”
Paul did not answer.
Matty said, “As long as you’re here, you might as well see Mom.”

Merillee looked up from the hospital bed.
“I don’t believe it,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you in this life again.”
She looked at her other two children. She said, “Could you all go and leave me with your brother for a bit.”
Claire nodded and pulled her sullen brother out of the room behind her.
“I can stay,” Paul said, sitting down and pulling on the knees of his jeans, “as long as you need me to.”
“I’m just glad you’re here.”
“I’m sorry I left the way I did.”
“You had to grow up,” his mother said. “You had to get away. And with what happened to your friends. To Wyman. And to that one boy.”
“Kyle, Mama.”
“Yes,” she said.
Paul thought of Jeff and TJ. They’d tried to get away and died in ditches. There were so many friends.
“But how are you, Mom?”
“I’m finishing up chemo, but there was a bad flare up. I guess that’s why Claire called. That and she’s been keeping house by herself. That’s a lot. Even for a girl as capable as her.”
“Well, she’s not alone, Mama. Right now she’s got me to help.
“When do you have to get back?”
“When I need to,” Paul shrugged.
“What are you doing out there? I’d love to see one of your plays.”
“Right now just cheap little movies that pay the bills,” Paul said. “but one day, Mama, I promise I’m going to do something to make your proud.”

For that afternoon, though, Paul stayed with his mother, and then took the kids to dinner and to the store.
“When’s the last time you got groceries?”
“Three days ago. Matty went.”
“How? The store’s two miles away.”
“I drove,” Matty said.
“You’re twelve.”
Matty shrugged. “It’s East Carmel.”
“Even so…”
“Relax, I took the back roads.”
“I saw your old friend Wyman by the way,” Matty said. “He and his wife have five kids by now. She keeps getting fatter. But so does he.”
Matty smiled spitefully, and Paul wondered how much he knew about the past.
“He’s hurt,” Claire said, later. “He doesn’t trust you. He’s been abandoned.”
Then she added, “We’ve been abandoned.”



Claire was a married middle aged woman now, with grown children. Paul reflected that, considering where they had grown up, it was strange that the second and third generation of Andersons should have such a considerable deepening of melonin content. Her son, Riley, after years of hating the red afro that was his hair, had cut it down and now looked something Malcolm X. Years ago the entire family had been at a party and Claire had arrived, looking beautiful.
“How is my favorite niece?” Fenn had asked while his sister’s daughter, Layla, cleared her throat.
Claire threw her arms about Fenn and told her sister in law, Layla, “You know he just does it to drive us both crazy.
Well into the night, Claire said, “When Paul finally came back home, he brought you with him. That was how I knew he would stay. He’d been living with you and Todd and he was different. More stable. Braver I think. I knew he wasn’t going to disappear anymore.”



That first time Paul stayed for three weeks. And there was an overly talkative volunteer in white name Michael who talked about cell counts and improvements and medicines while his head bobbed up and down.
“I guess,” Paul said, running a hand over his mouse like mouth, “I just need to get a hold on exactly what Mom has. Or had.”
“Well the lymphatic system is part of the body's immune defense system. Its job is to help fight diseases and infection. The lymphatic system includes a network of thin tubes that branch, like blood vessels, into tissues throughout the body. Lymphatic vessels carry lymph, a colorless, watery fluid that contains infection-fighting cells called lymphocytes. Along this network of vessels are small, bean-shaped organs called lymph nodes. Clusters of lymph nodes are found in the underarms, groin, neck, chest, and abdomen. Other parts of the lymphatic system are the spleen, thymus, tonsils, and bone marrow. Lymphatic tissue is also found in other parts of the body, including the stomach, intestines and skin. Does that make sense?”
“Uh, yeah,” Paul said.
“Like all types of cancer, lymphoma cancers are diseases of the body's cells. Healthy cells grow, divide and replace themselves in an orderly manner. This process keeps the body in good repair. And—”
Suddenly, Paul placed his hand in Michael’s crotch. The obviously gay boy looked at him in surprise and Paul, going from frightened, to predatory, began to massage him.
“What else…” Paul continued, rubbing the boy into arousal as his sister and brother sat watching television in the next room.
“Uh…” Michael tried, “In the non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, cells in the lymphatic system grow abnormally. They divide too rapidly and grow without any order or control. Too much tissue is formed, and tumors begin to grow. The cancer cells can also spread to—”
Paul stood up, suddenly, and barked, “I’m walking Michael to his car. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

A few minutes later, a car headed up the road, briefly illuminating the area behind the old barn of the Anderson farm. Rock and roll music drifted across the fields and then was soon gone. Above, the moon was only a crescent, with a wedge of hard white light that, nevertheless, failed to pierce the darkness. All was quiet except for the sound of crickets, and a thumping against metal, a frustrated grunting as, jeans down around his ankles, Paul pressed the nurse Michael’s face into the side of his car and his arm around his throat in a choke hold, fucked him. Paul Anderson was frail, awkward, out of control and scared. As Michael whimpered and Paul, ass clinched, cock wedged deep inside of him, rose on the balls of his heels in triumphant orgasm, his neck muscles straining, he realized it was better to be Johnny.


TOMORROW: ELEGY

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great conclusion to the chapter. Poor Paul he and his family are going through a lot in the past. I am glad he came back to see his Mum. Excellent writing and I look forward to Elegy tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

You are right. Poor Paul and his family, but just poor Paul. A lot has gone down.

 

[ChrisGibson]

E I G H T





“My name is Noah. It’s Noah all the time.”

- Noah Riley


Before he left for LA, Paul looked up how many sleeping pills it would take for him to kill himself, and he got two answers, the first which was highly detailed.

I'm not sure how many it can take to kill you but I can tell you this, it's incredibly hard for you to ingest them orally to kill yourself. Your body will reject taking too many pills and would force yourself to induce vomiting to get rid of it.
The best way is to take a whole bottle, maybe more if you're really sure about committing suicide, grinding up the pills as fine as you can (pestle and mortar would be best, or even using a coffee grinder would be better) and mixing it with warm water. Put that into an enema and shove it up your anus as far as you can so it gets past any feces in the cavity and towards the nerves and then slowly squeeze all the substance inside. Lay on your side and you'll sleep for sure. This way your system will absorb the pills very quickly, much quicker than orally which will almost guarantee your death if not guaranteed.
People use this method with things like oxy, ecstacy, etc. Even beer because it gets absorbed into your system much quicker. The more you overload your system with stuff like this the better the chances of you dying.

The reply was:

Hello ; God is the only one that can save any of us from Hell. We all have fell short of the the glory of God . The good new is he sent his only son Jesus Christ to die on a cross to make a way for all who would trust in him to be saved from there sins. All you need to do is trust in him repent of your sins ask him into your heart and you will be saved! We all are sinners my friend but Jesus made a way for us all to be saved! Find you a good church and read your bible its never to late! God is great my friend! I will pray for you and I know everything will be OK if you trust in our Lord and savior Jesus Christ!

Paul wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He hated misspelling and overgeneralization, and online Christians seemed to prone to both. He wasn’t angry at God the way some people he knew were. He knew one guy he did scenes with who went to Mass once a week aside from Sunday and said the Rosary every night. But the truth was he just didn’t want to think about God. Jesus didn’t seem likely, not in the world he had seen. But he also didn’t seem… not real. Paul read the other answers to the query about how many pills it took to kill yourself.


I'm honestly considering this within the next week or so. Even God isn't enough to save me from going to hell.

The one who had first asked the question responded, and the others wrote back:

At his old desk, Paul took off his shades and looked out the window onto the green field that used to grow corn where the road out of town passed, and then he looked back to the screen.

Hey. I can understand why you would want to kill yourself. I want to die too. But I've lost hope even in that! How hopeless am I, huh? I've tried many methods of committing suicide, all have failed.. I've no idea why.. at the end I've just come to the sad conclusion that it isn't my time yet.. how I wish it weren't true.. I've given myself peptic ulcer though. Maybe I'll get lucky one day and die from it. But knowing my luck... I'll probably live a long, tortuous life instead..

He remembered last year when he had been at Fulsom and a boy, maybe sixteen or so, saw him and said, “Johnny Mellow?”
His voice had throbbed as if he was seeing, not someone famous, but someone holy, and Johnny nodded, remembering himself and giving the boy a warm smile while he said, “Hey, kid.”
The boy’s eyes had filled with tears and Johnny, who never wondered who was watching his porn was struck. It wasn’t that all of a sudden he thought he was making art, but something in him, in what he was doing, had struck something in this kid, and he wondered about other people in their rooms, alone, touching themselves to him, or even not touching themselves, just watching, mouths open, on their knees, like devotees before saints’ altars.
Johnny shook his head, that kid’s face still before his eyes, and read:

I understand where you are coming from I too am planning this for myself. For you people who tell us to change something well what if u cant get a job that will support you or if you are in abusive situation that is impossible to escape from and you have no one to turn to no skills to take care of your self are you saying being homeless and hungry and in danger is better than dying? I have searched all available options with no solution. I am 43 years old no matter how good I am or how much I talk to God or try to change whats making me unhappy Nothing works I have pleaded with God for 20 years to help me and nothing nothing ever changes I've done it all my husband has ruined my credit, I cant get a job that will support me because they all do credit checks I have major pain on a daily basis that only medical insurance could help with and my husband only pays for himself to have my 1 under age daughter has medicade my state will not adopt the medicaid reform I have no other choice, he is only concerned with himself my children are my only happiness and all i am doing is making them miserable and I am not willing to put them thru this anymore.


Please don't do this. I understand your pain and I have wanted to do this so many times. It's NOT the answer. I care. Please don't do this.

He turned from the computer. He’d really just wanted to know how many pills he could take and not die on the flight back home. Funny how LA was home now. He hadn’t actually been thinking of killing himself. Had he?

TOMORROW: THE BOOK OF THE BATTLES

 

[CharmedFan28]

Sounds like Paul is still really going through it. I am glad he didn’t kill himself. Excellent writing as always and I look forward to more tomorrow!

 

[ChrisGibson]

Yes, Paul is still going through it, of course he is just coming home from dealing with his mother having cancer and on his way back to LA to prostitute himself, so... We've been away from his story for a few days, but we'll get back to him next week.